In this article computer scientist Gary Marcus laid down the gauntlet:

...allow me to propose a Turing Test for the twenty-first century: build a computer program that can watch any arbitrary TV program or YouTube video and answer questions about...

Trinity) was the first nuclear weapon test. The test was conducted above ground on July 16, 1945 on what is now known as the White Sands Missile Range. Since Trinity, over 2,000 nuclear tests have been conducted world wide.

The US has conducted...

Weapons in which the energy is provided by nuclear fission or fusion have only twice in history been detonated outside of a controlled test environment, in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events in World War II.

Since then, the world has nearly gone to...

Nuclear weapons have only been detonated offensively twice. Both detonations were by the US over Japanese cities in 1945. As of May 2021, the US and two of its strategic rivals are the states with the most nuclear warheads in the world (Russia with...

According to the Arms Control Association's Nuclear Testing Tally, there have been 2,056 nuclear weapons tests around the globe (as of September 6, 2022). This tally includes nuclear weapons testing for military purposes as well as peaceful nuclear...

The Turing test is,

a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a...

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel.

According to Foreign Policy:

Initial information suggests that the attack has no precedent in recent Israeli history. The IDF said approximately 2,200 rockets were launched in the...

Anti-Satellite (ASAT) weapons come in a variety of forms, including cyber operations, electronic jamming, laser "dazzling," and kinetic physical attacks like missiles and co-orbital weapons.

As both the militarization and the commercialization of...

Ray Kurzweil and Mitchell Kapor summarize their reasons for taking the bet here.

This is one of several questions in this tournament focused on nuclear proliferation, force sizes, or yields. See here for a list of such questions and some discussion of these topics.

Whether any country has very high-yield nuclear weapons in its...

Weapons in which the energy is provided by nuclear fission or fusion have only twice in history been detonated outside of a controlled test environment, in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events in World War II.

Since then, the world has nearly gone to...

From Wikipedia:

Nuclear power in space is the use of nuclear power in outer space, typically either small fission systems or radioactive decay for electricity or heat. Another use is for scientific observation, as in a Mössbauer spectrometer. The...

Given the public disagreement of expert opinion on AI timelines, seen for example here, there is a need to establish a credible track-record of accurate forecasting in the lead-up to the development of AGI.

Oren Etzioni, head of the Allen AI...

Intelligence quotient (IQ) is a measure of relative intelligence. Mensa International is a high-IQ society open to those scoring in the 98th percentile or higher in IQ. An IQ score of 131 (standard deviation 15) on the Mensa admission test is...

In 2016, there was a lot of buzz about the potential use of airships as heavy-lift cargo aircraft. Quest Rare Minerals Ltd. had struck a deal with Straitline Aviation to provide airships for hauling ore concentrate, supplies, and personnel between...